My group shot a goose this morning that I took home to clean and while doing this I found two lead "pellet gun" pellets in separate breasts up near the sternum. I found the holes from them and they appeared to be pretty old. My question is if the meat is still okay to eat or if I should just cut off the area of the breasts that the pellets were in? Any incite is appreciated, thanks! - Jake

If they are old wounds the lead pellets will have a skin like casing surounding them, kind of like the skin on a sausage. For reasons unknown to me the body incases the lead with a membrane in waterfowl and humans too. I saw this in waterfowl before the lead ban. As a kid I got hit with a #6 lead pellet in the back of the hand and cut it out years later and it had that membrane surounding it too. That may help you decide if this is a old healed wound or not. The only thing I can say for pellets if there is any kind of infection or puss the meat is tanted.